


The Things You Forgot

by paroxferox



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Remembers, Bucky-centric, Captain America: The Winter Soldier Spoilers, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Memory Loss, Work In Progress, stick with it for the fluff i promise it will be adorable
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-14
Updated: 2014-05-04
Packaged: 2018-01-19 09:49:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1464889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paroxferox/pseuds/paroxferox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Winter Soldier dragged the Captain from the river out of a sense of obligation, not memory. Memory is dangerous to a human weapon, and remembering might well cost the Winter Soldier more than he realizes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Footsore

**Author's Note:**

> For evilgrinningdog on tumblr

After he drags the Captain’s broken, bleeding body from the wreckage in the Potomac, the Winter Soldier walks.

He does not know where he is going, or what he intends to do. Speculation and free will fall outside the parameters of his intended function, and though parts of his brain roil and seethe like the river-water around the burning carcasses of Project Insight, he finds neither the surge of initiative nor the  _desire_  to make those decisions. He steals the jacket off a dead man - SHIELD or HYDRA, enemy or ally, he no longer knows - and walks until he feels secure.

It is easy enough, at first, to disappear into the sparse woodland across the river from the Triskelion, but the forest - if it can even be called that - is finite, and the Winter Soldier is not equipped to operate in complete isolation for prolonged periods of time. The battle with the Captain has damaged his arm, and without a mechanic, there is no telling how long he can operate independently. He will need to be repaired, and for that, he will need HYDRA. Yet when he thinks about return, he is overwhelmed by vague dread that he pushes down, replacing an emotional desire to s _tay away_  with a practical reason: it is not safe. The turmoil that the Captain and his squad have caused means it is unsafe to return to his den. With the Black Widow’s information dump, no doubt the base has been compromised. It is too close to the heart of current activity, too dangerous to warrant a visit, and the Winter Soldier is no fool. Pierce is dead, and his other superiors are compromised. Returning might kill him - or worse, kill  _them_. He will not return.

And so when he leaves the woodland, he heads back in the direction of the city. This one, at least, is not unfamiliar to the Winter Soldier; he has prowled it before. District of Columbia, Washington. Capital city of the United States of America. Headquarters: United States House of Representatives, United States Senate, President of United States, CIA, NSA, FBI, SHIELD (formerly), countless other, less relevant agencies. With the jacket pulled tight around him, hands shoved into pockets, head bowed, he walks. The streets crawl with police and military, but they run in a direction opposite him, toward the sites of the wreckage. The Winter Soldier is not inclined to give chase for now, and so they ignore him. He walks on, aimless, uncertain where to go.

The first night, he slumps in the doorway of a building, unsure of how to proceed. The Winter Soldier is not used to drifting. He is not used to working without a mission - though he realizes, somewhere in the back of his mind, that should he want one, there is one task he left unfinished. For the first time since the Helicarrier dropped from the sky, he thinks about the Captain. He doesn’t know why, but something in his body seizes up when he thinks about him. The Captain was his mission. He had him in his grasp, and even when he fell away, the Winter Soldier could have let him die. But in that moment, when it was the Captain’s life on the line...he did nothing. He is not sure what compelled him to drag the unconscious body out of the water, and when he thinks about it, pain twists in his chest and leaves him breathless and disoriented.

He does not sleep, because whenever he closes his eyes, he sees the face, feels the body under him.  _I’m not going to fight you. I’m with you to the end of the line. Do it, then_ _._  The words mean almost nothing, but they still make the Winter Soldier shudder and tug his jacket tighter. He is grateful for the sunrise.

When he walks again, it is not quite as aimless. Whatever the night’s discomfort brought, it awakened some spark of self-preservation in the Winter Soldier, giving his feet a direction as he paces the twists and alleys of the city. If he cannot return to his den, cannot meet with his handlers, then he will need to vanish. It is as much a mission as any, and one that gives him some modicum of satisfaction: he is good at vanishing. He stops once at a library, a few cursory Internet searches turning up places to get new clothes, to hunker down - places that will give him the chance to fade into anonymity. An hour later, he is at a shelter.

He accepts an offer of fresh clothes - jeans, an old jacket, and a hat he can pull down over his eyes - but refuses the meal offered him. Food is something of a mystery; the Winter Soldier rarely eats during a mission, and what he does has always been specifically provided to him by his handlers. Without those handlers, he cannot be certain food is safe. It is better that he not eat. The man who gave him clothes offers him a place to sleep, but his eyes linger suspiciously on the Winter Soldier, and panic rises in his throat again. He has been careful, but perhaps not careful enough. He cannot risk detection. He leaves immediately.

Without the shelter, though, he is lost again. He walks for the sake of walking, letting the motion of his body consume his being. When he begins to fatigue, the sun has begun to tip to the west, and he sinks into a crouch against a wall, tipping his head back and taking a look at the place he has landed for the first time. Downtown. Too clean to be a place where people  _live_. A tourist thoroughfare. Less dangerous than residential areas; no one is likely to recognize he’s out-of-place if they don’t know the area.

A banner with a picture of a man’s face and  _Smithsonian_  emblazoned across it catches his eye. The face is familiar. He has seen it recently, staring up at him, calling him names that mean nothing to him. His mission.

Captain America.

It’s worth a little more walking to find the museum. Admission is free.

He pulls the hat lower and slouches inside.


	2. Compromised

James Buchanan Barnes. That is the name of the man who would one day become the Winter Soldier.

It means nothing to the Winter Soldier, who scrutinizes photographs of a face that looks like his - _is_ his? - and tries to reconcile it with everything that has happened to him since the confrontation on the bridge. The Captain refused to fight back, and the reason why _must_ be somewhere in the photographs and video clips. Whatever compelled the Winter Soldier to drag the Captain from the Potomac, whatever stayed his hand when he could have killed the man, it’s locked deeper than he can reach on his own. James Buchanan Barnes, the man with the Winter Soldier’s face in the Air and Space Museum, must hold the key.

He stays until close the first day, and comes back the next as soon as the museum opens, lingering in the exhibit hall until the museum staff begin to eye him. Their suspicion doesn’t pass unnoticed, but the Winter Soldier is desperate for something, _anything_ to connect him to the faces of the men smiling in the archival films. He watches everything, reads every line of text a dozen times, but the man with his face, his body, the man who fell one day and woke up the Winter Soldier, is as foreign and unknowable to him as the tourists that throng and press around him.

It’s not to say Certain things are... _familiar_ , in an ambiguous way. It’s nothing _profound_ , but certain expressions in a photograph, or certain gestures in a few seconds of film elicit a vague response in the back of his mind. It’s nothing but abstraction, though, the same way he knew the Captain on the bridge. He doesn’t _remember_ \- memory is impossible for a mind locked down and carefully-packed the way his is - but he _recognizes_. This face, that uniform, _those_ medals on _that_ chest - he has seen them before. He has known them, once upon a time in another time and place, when the Winter Soldier was something else.

(For a moment as he looks at a picture of the Captain, stripped to the waist, he gets the impression that he has known _far more_ than just his face, but the feeling is fleeting.)

For three days, that’s all he feels. He goes in and stares, staying until close every day, hat pulled down, clothes growing increasingly-ragged (what do people _do_ about clothes? he has no idea) while he waits for something, anything, to happen. He worries at the darkness in his brain, picking at it like an open wound, digging for a response beyond vague recognition.

The fourth time he goes back, it’s like falling through ice. One moment, he is standing in front of the archival footage, watching the play of shadows on the now-familiar faces, scrutinizing them for their secrets, desperate for something, anything, that might give a hint to that tickling in the back of his head. The next, he is drowning, swamped with _pure emotion_. It isn’t memory but _feeling_ , seventy years of locked-away needs and desires crashing through him, enveloping his body in a whirl of sensation that starts deep in his chest and explodes outward. It is the opposite of HYDRA’s cryo-sleep, which comes from the outside and numbs every part of him until there is nothing but blackness - it’s sensation and _feeling_ that boils from his core and sets everything in him alight. It overwhelms him, but for a moment, just the barest moment, he _understands_ James Buchanan Barnes.

In that flash, he _is_ James Buchanan Barnes.

He comes to curled into himself in a corner of the exhibit, shaking and nearly hyperventilating, with a concerned security guard keeping alarmed museum patrons at bay. Any glimmer of recognition he might have had vanishes, panic setting his head in the right direction and pushing him immediately back into the mindset of the Winter Soldier. It’s like a reset button, a wipe without being wiped: necessity has broken the other mind’s hold on him and he is only dimly aware of the feelings from before. His face is wet with tears he doesn’t remember shedding. He scrubs at it, aware that eyes are still on him. Did he scream? Cry out? Is that why they’re staring?

The elderly museum guard turns from the onlookers to the Winter Soldier and extends a hand, voice soft as he asks, “You okay, Son? Just take a few deep breaths and I’ll get you a drink of water, how’s that sound?” The offer of charity and the concern in the old man’s voice kick him into overdrive. He has stayed in one place for too long. People recognize his face and treat him with familiarity. He is _known_.

The guard shuffles away and the crowd has moved on, and as soon as eyes are off him, he staggers to his feet and bolts. This time, it’s not the steady walk of a living weapon. It’s a frantic, aimless run - he hits the doors to the museum, stumbles outside, and heads for the first alley he sees. The fewer people looking at him, the better. He’s back to instinct, unthinking, entire mind and body consumed with the single goal of _getoutgetout **getout**._

_The asset has been compromised._

It is, perhaps, the only thing crossing his mind that can be considered a _thought_. The rest are _impressions_ ; the Winter Soldier operates on instinct, and right now his instincts are _run_ and _hide_. The city is no longer safe.

He will go to ground. There are hide-holes, safehouses, places that HYDRA established in case of catastrophic failure. He remembers some of them, and though his programming resists the idea of entering one without a handler, panic overrides it. He will regroup and establish a plan (again, his programming resists the idea of independent operation, but desperate times call for desperate measures) and move from there. It’s not _going rogue_ \- he suppresses a shudder at the thought - but he’s no longer safe aboveground, and he doesn’t know what else to do. For the first time since the battle for Project Insight, when he was trapped under the beam on the falling Helicarrier, he feels fear.

Somewhere in the depths of his subconscious, the part of him that remembers being James Buchanan Barnes is comforted.

 


	3. Delirious

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter gets kinda heavy, but it's also a turning point in a good way. Content warnings for frequent references to disordered eating, some references to physical abuse, and a brief mention of vomit.
> 
> I promise things look up from next chapter onwards. More Nat, Sam, and Steve next chapter! Thank you guys for sticking with me!

The HYDRA safehouse is barely more than a hole in the ground - a dank basement under a condemned building, long since fallen into disrepair. The Winter Soldier wonders briefly that HYDRA had not maintained it, but it is not his place to question and there were priorities. Perhaps this place was not a priority. Nonetheless, it will serve its purpose. He does not require more than a place to wait. And he is prepared to sit indefinitely, waiting for handlers that he is vaguely aware will probably never come.

On the third day he becomes aware that a gnawing discomfort he had been ignoring has become a more pressing pain, a twisting in his abdomen that demands immediate attention. _Hunger._ The body demands sustenance, but the Winter Soldier has never had permission to feed himself. His handlers have supplied him, and the idea of finding and preparing food makes him…uneasy. He looks listlessly at the few dried, boxed meals he finds stashed in a watertight bag, but something in his programming stops him from taking what is not his. This food is for the handlers. The Winter Soldier does not eat it. He quells the snarling in his belly with water and settles down to wait.

By the fourth day, he is lightheaded. By the sixth, he is delirious. Memories begin to leach into his mind like poison, turning his world fuzzy-edged and strangely-colored, curling claws into everything he understands as true.

He knows nothing but pain when the Captain finds him.

He does not recognize the man when he approaches, barely hears the question he asks (and does not register the meaning of the words beyond their tone). His body feels wrong, simultaneously too hot and too cold and maddeningly empty. He should have eaten, should have fed himself one of the MREs or taken food when it was offered to him, but he didn’t, and now he shivers uncontrollably despite the blankets he has wrapped around himself. He feels sick through to his bones.

But the body is secondary to the head, the pain in his _mind_ that rips through the deepest parts of him, wracks him with emotions that he cannot recognize, leaves him sobbing and broken but unable to understand the _source_ of it. The man asks another question, but the Winter Soldier can barely hear him. At one point, he leans down, and his face comes into the Winter Soldier’s field of view. He asks, “Bucky? Bucky, can you hear me?” and the Winter Soldier’s mind _explodes_ , drowning him in a sea of nearly-familiar memories that completely incapacitate him. He knows him. He _knows_ him.

_I know you_ , he says, tries to say, but his mouth doesn’t form the words, and he can’t feel his tongue, though he knows he is screaming. Everything goes dark.

When he comes to, his throat is raw and his skin still feels too hot. Someone has tied him down, thick leather straps around his right arm and chain on his left. He panics, chest constricting and blocking his air, cutting off the scream in a frantic cough. He is too weak to break free, and it becomes apparent almost immediately that a struggle will only waste whatever fragile strength he has remaining. He collapses back, muscles going slack against the restraints as he regroups, trying to will away the fear and get a better grip on his surroundings. There are lights on the ceiling, circular, familiar to him in some way, but too bright for him to look at. He squeezes his eyes shut and focuses on breathing.

After a few breaths, he feels calmer. He opens his eyes again, squinting at the lights and angling his head away, looking to his right. There is a stand beside the platform - cot? gurney? - he is strapped to, bags of clear liquid hanging from it. A thin tube trails from one bag, and he follows it down to the inside of his wrist before his vision blurs too much for him to see anything else.

Drugged. He is being drugged. That means probably not HYDRA. SHIELD, then. His enemy has taken control of him. He is a prisoner of war.

Dimly, he can make out voices. At least three speakers, possibly more. The sounds do not resolve themselves into words, but it becomes obvious by the tone that there is an argument. One of the speakers, female, is _furious_. He can hear the suppressed rage in every bitten-off syllable. One of the other voices, male, is trying to placate. A third, also male, is...he can’t tell. Frantic, somehow. Perhaps afraid. That’s the voice arguing with the female speaker. The Winter Soldier breathes deeply, trying to focus enough to understand the words of the conversation. It gives him something to focus on, something beyond the panic and the pain, and perhaps it can give him some clue to his location.

... _couldn’t just leave him to die! What did you want me to…_

_...putting us all in danger…_

_...can’t blame him, it’s his..._

They fade in and out, occasionally intelligible as the Winter Soldier’s mind clears enough to work out the language (English) and focus. It is difficult, though - whatever the clear bag is dripping into his veins is more likely a sedative than anything else. It would explain the sluggishness in his brain and the way his vision occasionally fades to nothing but soft-edged blurs of color. The voices continue, only occasional words reaching the Winter Soldier’s ears. Wherever the speakers are, he can’t see them, and when he tries to turn his head to follow the sound, a bloom of pain in his neck makes him stifle a cry and slump, instinctively going ragdoll-limp against the hurt. One of the male voices - the frantic one that tickles deep down in his head as vaguely familiar - stops.

He hears footsteps approaching, the sound of someone coming too close for comfort. He flinches at the sound of a breath somewhere above his head. The strike of correction he expects never comes. The man who approached him - because it was a man, he knows. The footsteps were too heavy for a woman - takes a deep breath and then stops. He holds it, like he’s trying to think of something to say. The silence drags on. One of the other voices - the woman’s - breaks it with a soft, “Steve -”

The name stirs something in the Winter Soldier’s mind. That name...he recognizes _that_ name, and whether it’s from the recent past or the distant past, he can’t tell - the drugs are making him sluggish and confused. “Steve…” he echoes softly, a crackling whisper he’s not aware he said aloud until it reaches his own ears. He hears the man above him inhale sharply, like he has been struck, and flinches away from the correction he’s still anticipating, even as he opens his eyes to see who it is standing above him.

With the harsh light behind his head, his face is somewhat obscured in shadow, and the Winter Soldier’s drug-blurred vision offers only the vaguest idea of a face. But it’s a face he knows, a face he _knew_ \- a face he’s not sure he can ever forget. It’s _him_. Mission - mission? _Missionmissionmission **nostopnostopfriend? Friend!?**_ Confusion overwhelms him, freezing the Winter Soldier even as the Captain exhales in a shaky sigh. “Hey, Buck,” he says softly, a tentative smile pulling at one side of his mouth, and the Winter Soldier burns with familiarity.

The flood of _feeling_ is almost identical to the one he felt in the museum, and he screams in spite of himself before the emotional overload makes him faint again.

For several days, he fades in and out of consciousness, coming out of it to reassure himself that he has not moved before letting dreamless sleep claim him again. Each time, he is awake a little longer, and each time, he registers a little more of his situation. SHIELD seems disinclined to wipe him, at least until he is better. His care is, for the most part, gentle. He is restrained constantly, but not _harmed_ , not punished for displaying weakness. The bag hangs constantly at his right, ever dripping liquid into his arm. When he is conscious for longer than he sleeps, he realizes it is a palliative, undoing the damage he did by failing to nourish his own body. They are making him well.

Perhaps he is not a prisoner of war.

From there, recovery (if it can be called that) is quicker. When he is awake, he is levered into a sitting position, still restrained, but more vertical.It gives him a better view of his surroundings, and he memorizes each nook and cranny of the cell as he feels the strength ooze its way back into his limbs. The day he feels well enough to croak an inquiry, a cup of water is brought to his lips, and the coolness pouring down his throat comforts him. By his third day awake, he feels alert. He still shivers, but it is against the cool, moist air of the holding cell rather than from hunger or fever, and when he does it, a white-coated woman with the SHIELD eagle on her breast tucks a blanket around him.

Soon after, they begin to feed him. It is bland oatmeal at first, and when he is strong enough to stomach more than a few mouthfuls, they give him supervised use of his right hand and a spoon and allow him a full portion. The first time he finishes a bowl, he vomits ten minutes later. The next time, he keeps it down.

The carefully-controlled portions, strict routine, and bland food remind him of HYDRA in some ways. It gives him the illusion of security. SHIELD is not HYDRA, though; the white-coated woman (the doctor overseeing him, he realizes) is kind to him. Her touch as she unstraps him is gentle, and she never forces a gag between his teeth or pushes him into a machine that sends the white-hot pain of electricity through his body. She is, for lack of a better word, _pleasant_. She asks him if he is all right, checks that he’s eaten everything, and after the third day introduces variety into the oatmeal she gives him. Sometimes there is peanut butter added to it, and often there is fresh fruit. He particularly likes strawberries, and once she gives him maple syrup and he almost faints from the rush of tooth-aching sweetness.

Bananas taste strange, though, and he doesn’t understand why a fruit he has no memory of consuming could taste _wrong_ to him.

As long as he consents to restraint following his meals, he is told, he will be allowed to continue feeding himself. Sometime after his first awakening in the bunker (he recalls someone saying ‘a week’ long before he is allowed any freedom, but he doesn’t know how long he was unconscious) he is briefly unbound and allowed to walk around the cell. A single lap exhausts him - he is still being kept sedated - but he is granted the same exercise daily, which seems to satisfy his doctor. The tiny amount of strictly-supervised freedom of motion is just enough to keep him from feeling trapped, its conditional nature enough to satisfy a need for rigid protocol. It is _comfortable_ for the Winter Soldier; he is SHIELD’s asset, now. They have taken him from HYDRA. When he is recovered, he will no doubt become their weapon.

Nothing he can observe for himself seems to contradict this. The few visitors he has are almost exclusively SHIELD. A dark-haired woman (he recognizes her as an associate of Fury, the Captain, and codename Black Widow) stands outside his cell and watches him for several hours one day. The Black Widow herself curls impassively in a chair just inside the room and watches him every morning with an unchanging blank expression. A man he recognizes as one of the Captain’s allies stays for only a few minutes before shaking his head and leaving. None of those visitors come near or speak to him, though. Only one of his guests is bold enough to come close to him, but only does so in the evenings, after the doctor changes his clear plastic bag.

Then, when he is relaxed and sluggish, accepting of the stressors of the world around him, the Captain comes to see him, calling him Bucky when he greets him, then lapsing into pained silence. Often, he does not say anything more, simply sits and watches. Sometimes, he reads books. Once or twice, when he thinks the Winter Soldier is asleep, he speaks quietly, telling stories about a past that he claims they shared. The Winter Soldier doesn’t remember any of the things he talks about. The memories stay buried, probably suppressed by whatever the bag drips into his veins, but sometimes when the Winter Soldier sleeps, he dreams about a scrawny blond man with enormous blue eyes and a place called Coney Island.


End file.
